Before jogging occasionally, Akeem Baker makes sure he wears something bright. He draws a familiar course through the neighborhoods where he is known. And he looks up at the sky and gives a nod to his best friend, Ahmaud Arbery.
The ritual is painful for Baker. He finds it disturbing that he is obliged to follow a checklist with precautions reserved only for black runners to maintain his safety. It also hurts, because it was the tragic murder of Arbery – his friend since they were 6 years old – in Brunswick, Georgia, a year ago that resulted in the security measures he did not institute before February 23rd.
“I used to run for health reasons,” said Baker, a 2016 graduate of Morehouse College. “Now I run for a sense of therapy, as if I are chasing a kind of freedom.”
Baker’s life and inspiration for running changed when Arbery’s sister called him when he was in New York the night her brother was chased in a pickup truck, shot dead while jogging. Two white men await trial. A third man, who was also arrested, recorded the shooting on cellphone video.
“Since February 23, 2020, I have been thinking of my friend and praying that his life has not been in vain,” Baker said. He met Arbery on a primary school bus and they quickly became friends for the next 20 years.
He said he was ’embittered’ when he read a text message from Arbery’s sister telling her what was said to her at the time – the false information that Arbery had broken into someone’s house and been killed. “I cried in the bathroom all night,” Baker said. “I was sad. And I’m still confused.”
Father and son Gregory and Travis McMichael pursued Arbery, who stopped during his jogging stop to wander into a house under construction in their area, prosecutors say.
The image lies in the brains of black runners who spoke to NBC News: Arbery, 25, stumbled before crashing to the ground after being shot.
“His tragic death changed everything for black runners,” said Kevin O. Davis, a member of the Plano Running Club in Texas, which has 2,000 members, almost all white. “I changed everything. I saw people in their car slowing down as I ran and looked at me in their rearview mirror to make sure I was not robbing their house. I got white ladies screaming just because they see I’m being run by them.
“Once, when I stopped running against a light, this white man rolled down his window and sprayed insecticide on my face – for no reason. I thought I was going blind.
“But Ahmaud Arbery is something else, something horrible. So I don’t jog as much when it’s dark, and when I do, I make sure I wear reflectors. I’m nervous about running in black jogging clothes,” he said. “It’s all different. We need to be self-aware.”
Black female joggers also make safety adjustments, said Buffalo Kim Backey. Backey, an avid runner who walks down the street even in the snow, saw the murder of Arbery as a sign to change her running patterns.
“We, as black runners, have to worry about what we wear and where we’re going,” said Backey, 55. “I wear brighter colors now. I told my boys not to wear a hoodie because they would be judged. I have to take my own advice when I go running and that’s a shame.
“We have to run smart, but at the same time we must not give up our freedom to run because of our race,” she said.
With that in mind and Arbery’s spirit in mind, the 2:23 Foundation was set up last year to raise awareness of the shooting and plead “to help young men and women follow paths to similar events and cases of injustice. to avoid. ” The group, which has more than 82,000 followers on Facebook, has planned a national 2.23-mile race in memory of Arbery on the anniversary of this death.
Tyrone Irby, owner of the Choice Fitness and Sports Performance Center in Durham, North Carolina, has memories that help him understand the fear Arbery felt a year ago. According to Irby, two white youths chased him in Brooklyn, New York, after he missed his bus from school. “They cried for me when I ran,” he said. ‘I ran fast enough to avoid them. But I remember the fear I felt and can only imagine what Ahmaud felt.
“As black runners, we need to have our eyes in the back of our minds. That’s part of the fact that we’re black in America. It’s sad to think that we have to think every day about the shoes we wear, the times we “The colors we wear. Choose where we run. And now, during a pandemic, putting on a mask, a hoodie, at 6am … that can be problematic.”
But that did not stop Irby and others from holding on to the pavement and raising awareness of Arbery’s death. He created #TogetherWeStandNC, a group that sparked discussions around race, with Arbery’s murder as a starting point.
Irby, a member of the huge social media group #RunWithMaud, has committed more than 100 runners to another run in Arbery’s memory – the Maud 2.23 virtual run on Tuesday 23 is sponsored by Fleet Feet Carrboro, a clothing company in Durham .
“Everyone should be safe when they run. But that’s not the case,” Irby said.
He added: “When I leave the house at three o’clock, my registration is at hand in my car, my ID is at hand and I drive with the speed limit. Now we have to take the same precautions when we run. Every day is an emotional toll we have to “We have to be aware. It’s a bad way to live.”
For Dr. Terrell Holloway, a black psychiatrist at Yale University, will echo the murder of Arbery.
“It’s fascinating because we think of trauma and tension with soldiers in a combat situation,” Holloway said. “But what about the tension of … what happened to Ahmaud Arbery? It’s about how you handle a situation that affects you. But the fact that black people have such cases and thoughts of ‘it can happen to you’ speaks. the prominence of racism. ‘
Baker said the trauma of Arbery’s death forced him to seek advice. Every two weeks he visits a therapist to help treat him. “It was a lot,” he said. Kobe Bryant “died on my birthday – I was a big fan. Less than a month later my best friend was killed. Ahmaud was my person.”
The 37-year-old Augustus Turner, a major in the Army stationed in Madison, Alabama, wrote in a Facebook post that went viral about the psychological trauma of Arbery’s murder. It read in part: ‘Sometimes I think foolishly to myself in the back of my head: I’m just a black man jogging!
“Why would anyone shoot me just because I’m black and unknown? I’m a former EMT … I’m been a licensed lawyer and active duty officer for nine years. I have represented and helped more than 60 victims of sexual assault. ..I helped justify the destruction of hundreds of enemy targets in Iraq.I cleared the names of criminals who were wrongly convicted.Who wants to hurt me?
“Well, none of this matters because … I’m still a black man jogging. If I scare the wrong white person, or match the description of a threatening person … I become nothing but Ahmaud Not arbery. “
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Turner said he has no plans to stop the shooting. But then he saw the video.
“I could only look at it once,” he said. ‘To have to guard against being killed just for jogging … it snatches away another piece of our lives. We must constantly live in fear or be on our guard. I took my wife’s concerns about me running alone seriously. She always has this fear. So now I want to do it to go for a walk with my family in the neighborhood so that people can see that I am a man and a family man and not a threat. Maybe they will remember me. ‘
Backey, who cried after the video of the shooting, said: “As a runner I understand how Ahmaud would stop and look at a house being built. That’s what we do – we take our neighborhood. Jogging is freedom.I recently followed a different route when I stopped and thought of Ahmaud, and I said, “Let me get out of here.” That should not be the case. ‘
And yet few runners expect it to be any different soon. Arbery’s life and especially his death will resonate for a long time to come.
“Ahmaud and I ran a lot together,” Baker said. “He kept a better pace than I did, but he always encouraged me and pushed me to go harder. He may have had dark skin, but he was the brightest light. His smile and energy were always bright. And we must make sure people always know. ‘
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